Breadwinners Written and Directed by Peter Davis

Where:

In-Flight Theater, Load of Fun Building, 120 West North Avenue, 2^nd floor. Parking is everywhere!

When:

2 shows each day Saturday (May 26 and June 2) 3PM and 7PM

2 shows each day Sunday (May 27 and June 3) 3PM and 7PM

$10 tickets

Reservations:
https://davisbrand.tixato.com/buy/

Synopsis:

Alice, a financially strapped housewife and recent widow, moves in with her daughter Molly, who is a dominatrix.  Through the course of the play, Alice finds her backbone.

Breadwinners uses Alice’s journey to explore the relationship between power, control and love. The two women work it out.

Cast:

Alice – Barbara Geary

Molly – Jessica Ruth Baker

Man – Chris Krysztofiak

I’ve completed three full branding engagements: a leading edge program within the school of Social Work at the University of Maryland, a nationally recognized (60Minutes) public school debate league, and a beloved Baltimore cultural center. I also completed a focus group with the board of a regarded classical orchestra.

I’ve been writing a theater column for What Weekly, an online magazine documenting Baltimore’s culture and art renaissance.

What Weekly interview with Kwame Kei-Armah

The concept for the column is conversations with talented, smart, passionate people who tell stories mostly in a theater or in a theater style. Actually, the conversations are more like interviews. And the interviews are more about branding, leadership and vision, than they are about theater. Which leads to some interesting theater insights.

The branding engagements overlapped. My mind was continuously occupied with the branding process, which leans heavily on synthesis as its driver. I invited a talented theater performer and director Barbara Geary to work with me as an associate. She attended the orchestra focus group and helped me document, highlight and synthesize what was said. This was new and it worked.

In one of the engagements I re-learned the wisdom of silence and the value of patience. A client asked a difficult question I had no answer to. I asked for a moment to think about it. We were silent for almost 2 full minutes. 30-seconds into the silence I was beginning to panic. I was desperate for something smart to say. I kept breathing and hoping something would bubble up. I tried to remember the exact question. I couldn’t. Then I concentrated on the client as a person, and as a leader. Finally, I changed the subject. I gave her a compliment about the way she navigated politics and bureaucracy. She was grateful, and restated what I had said in a much different context. Bang! In a shot the conversation was now alive with new insight and energy, and we got around to a place where she could finally see that her power comes from her gift for strategy, not her heartfelt earnestness.

Meanwhile, the separation has been difficult. You divvy up memories, stuff, money and friends. And to make the most of it, I enlist the Universe for help. I make reasonable requests every now and then, and sometimes when strange and contrasting things work well together or something logistically or sequentially too-convenient happens. I think the Universe really is listening.

Excerpt:

But Mr. Guber, 68, who throws off ideas the way a storm hurls bolts at the prairie, has finally found a pattern in what can seem to be the brilliant disorder of his own thinking. Along the way, he’s also spotted a few things that the movie industry can teach the rest of us.

“I decoded it, I didn’t invent it,” Mr. Guber said — well, shouted, actually — as the energy of telling lifted him several inches above his seat in the second hour of a conversation about his voyage of discovery.

“It’s like a Seurat painting. Lots of dots,” said Mr. Guber, who talked of his wildly eclectic life in the sports and movie industries, as well as a decades-long commitment to teaching at the University of California, Los Angeles, and the dawning realization that something more than nervous energy held it all together.

“But the logic of it is clear to me now,” he said. That logic has to do with story, and how we are wired to organize our lives around it.

His coming to grips with narrative as a force in his own and others’ lives is the stuff of “Tell to Win: Connect, Persuade and Triumph With the Hidden Power of Story,” to be published on Tuesday by Crown Business.

Lately I’m thinking about design and trying to better understand the relationships between story, strategy and design.  Those organizations that artfully weave purpose, passion, performance and aesthetic have high performing brands.

In theater the script is story, the Director provides the strategy, and design permeates every sight and sound the audience experiences. Nothing in theater is arbitrary…nothing. The fewer resources you have the more creative you are. Instead of creating realism on the cheap, you take away everything non-essential to the world of your play.  It’s easier to maintain artistic unity with less clutter. What’s left looms large and the meaning of each symbol is clear, if not to the audiences brain, then to the universal subconscious. This is what you want your brand to do. Connect down deep where people make important decisions…emotionally. Value design, it matters. Design helps clear the path so customers can validate their connection to your brand.

Ida Cheinman is the Principal and Creative Director at Substance 151, a Baltimore-based regional strategic brand communications firm. Her article, Rebranding: The Moment of Truth is excellent. I want to share it with you. The premise is that you need to “begin with the end in mind,” have a clear vision of the rebrand goals and outcomes. The story of change comes in many forms. This is one.

Ida and I got acquainted last summer over a cup of coffee. I like how her firm, Substance 151 integrates design, story and strategy.

I’ve always claimed that my background in theater is what makes my approach to branding unique. As time went by and I became further removed from the source, I became uncomfortable making that claim. Since moving to Baltimore two years ago, I’ve gotten back into theater. Now I claim that I am a theater person and invite clients to see the work.

The theater creative process is fascinating and I model my brand discovery process on it.  It would have been interesting (and useful) to journal each production on the blog as they happened. I just didn’t want to explain it while it was happening. I preferred to stay immersed.

Here’s a synopsis of what I’ve been up to since July:

My short play Bring a Shovel is a Heideman Award finalist for the Actors Theatre of Louisville’s National Ten-Minute Play Contest. This is as good as it gets in the short play contest universe. They will announce the winner in January 2011. Even if it doesn’t win the award it may be produced in their Humana Festival of New American Plays.

I directed Nice Things, by Ken Greller for the Baltimore Playwrights Festival. It was awarded best Play and Best Production by the judges.

I am acting in W by Georg Buchner at Glass Mind Theater in December. We’re in rehearsal now.

I had a staged reading of a one act play Girdle Bound at Mobtown Theatre.

I’m currently writing a one-act play called Just Like Your Mother.

And in between all of that I had a branding engagement with Baltimore Tree Trust. They are a start-up non profit dedicated to helping Baltimore achieve it’s tree canopy goal.

*   *   *

In the coming weeks I’ll relate the relevant details of each experience and we’ll look for common themes. The point, as always, is harnessing the power of stories to transform people and organizations for the better.

“The Humble Hound” is a great editorial in the New York Times (April 8, 2010) by David Brooks on leadership styles. It ends using theater as a metaphor.

The metaphor relates to the people who work behind the scenes, whose satisfaction comes, not from the applause, but from working with others towards a shared higher purpose.

The two most artistically interesting people I know are Liz Lerman and Adrian Danzig. Liz is the founding Artistic Director of Liz Lerman Dance Exchange, and Adrian the Artistic Director of 500 Clown. What do a dancer and a clown have in common? They ask the most daring artistic questions and risk their take on the  answer in performance. For each, differently, failure is part of the bargain between them, their ensembles and their audiences.

Whatever question I ask Liz,  she will answer with a different proposal and set of questions.  This is how she creates art as well. Built into her creation process is the willingness to destroy her own premise, see what holds up, rebuild from there. Knowing what to jettison and what to keep is what distinguishes great artists. She has a book, Hiking the Horizontal: Field Notes From a Choreographer to be published by Wesleyan University press coming in spring 2011. I look forward to reading it.

Liz and I had a conversation about the difference between practice and rehearsal. Practice is skill-based. You practice the individual components of your art: plies at the barre, scales on a guitar, anatomy sketches in charcoal. The goal is perfection. Rehearsal is where you learn what doesn’t work. Rehearsal is where you try things. Where you go for the big “what if.” The goal of rehearsal is failure. If not in rehearsal where? In performance in front of an audience?

Liz and I wondered, if business is theater, then when do business performers (workers) get to rehearse.? If business is theater and process serves as the script, when and where do business performers learn what doesn’t work? When do workers get to build destruction into the business premise and come up with a better one? Unfortunately for customers, workers fail in performance when the stakes are highest. It’s hard to overcome a bad script and a lack of direction. Instead, managers often double down on the ideas and processes that got them in trouble in the first place. Management rarely questions their premise. Artists always do.

Branding Lesson–Build destruction into your own argument, see what holds up, and build around that. Repeat.

500 Clown (there are three of them), also asks big artistic questions. What makes them so unique is that their approach is to stage failure.  Yes they use rehearsal to try things and fail, and they aim to demonstrate in performance that failure  is part of the human experience, and survivable. A clown by nature subverts authority. To 500 Clown traditional theater itself represents authority. The script is authority. The fourth wall is authority. All must be subverted by clown-play. They’re clowns and clowns screw things up, of course, because they’re human. A clown by nature is also resilient!

The 500 Clown belief system goes like this…

500 Clown believes that life is worth the risk.

500 Clown wants to respect the actor as the primary artist, and not just serve as a mouthpiece for the writer and director.

In live performance it’s the actor, not the writer or director, who charges the moment. The objective is to feel something and do something authentic. 500 Clown wants to show that having a profound experience in public is survivable.

If we succeed, we show the respect for the audience and allow them to have their own profound experience.

*  *  *  That is what good branding is and does! Oh, that business would regard their workers as the “primary artist” versus the owner (author)  or manager (director) *  *  *

500 Clown recently performed 500 Clown Macbeth in Baltimore at the Creative Alliance. Their interpretation is based on a very simple premise: clown want crown. It takes them up to two years to develop a piece. It takes so long because they keep asking big questions and starting over. Their director doesn’t provide answers. She helps them decide what to jettison and what to keep. There is no single right answer. There is what works and what works more provocatively.

500 Clown deconstructs classic text, aims high and leaves no wiggle room artistically. They keep their edge by making the audience central to the storytelling. The risk of failure is high.

No one creates instant community better than 500 Clown. No one takes risks, and profits from doing so, more than 500 Clown.

Branding Lesson–Aim high and leave no wiggle room. Put your audience inside the story.

Have a look and listen:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mUGw5yC7P48&feature=PlayList&p=0CADB93695631416&index=

Here’s a link to Ignite Baltimore:

http://ignitebaltimore.com/

I’ve attended a few Ignites as a spectator and thought, “Hey, I could do that!” So, I sent in a proposal based on a previous post.  It was more challenging than I thought.

Imagining the slide show and finding suitable slides are two different things. Whether or not to time your presentation to the slide rotation is another important strategic decision. I did not.  I let the slides and my presentation each make their own case.

Choosing whether to follow a script or ad-lib according to themes was also a big decision. I tend to ramble when I’m nervous so I scripted my presentation and rehearsed it many times. I’ve noticed that most ad-libbers talk fast and try hard to be funny.  They tend to come across as amateurs.  I will admit that one-in-five sparkles. But it was a risk I wasn’t willing to take. Nor was I going to memorize my script.  Once you go up on lines you’re doomed. It ain’t community theater. No one will prompt you. My goal was good rhythm, the right tone, and timing it to end during the final slide.  You may decide whether I succeeded or not.

While you are asked not to make your presentation in the form of a commercial, I did use two existing theater companies as examples when making my case. One is a local theater with a production running now, and the other (from Chicago) will be presented locally in two weeks. I used them because it seemed wise to make the case (theater is a great business model) locally rather than abstractly. I plugged their productions, not my branding business.

In other news, I had public readings of two plays I submitted to the Baltimore Playwrights Festival (BPF) two Saturdays ago.  Public readings are performed by rehearsed actors for the highest rated submissions to the festival.  After each reading an open discussion is held with the playwright and the director.  While the BPF evaluators may recommend plays they deem worthy of staging, the handful of participating local theaters decide which scripts they are willing to produce.  I keep my fingers crossed.

It was a lot of fun hearing the characters come to life in front of an audience. Much of the feedback was useful and I am revising and rewriting both pieces. One is a 50 page urban one-act, and the other an anthology of three short plays all set in rural southern New Mexico.

Ideas for future posts include:

• Practice versus rehearsal
• When leadership matters most or a what to do when a one man shop gets an intern
• Critical response or dealing with feedback

I hope you’ll watch the Ignite presentation (see first link) and let me know what you think.

In business, as in theater, you are judged by your performance. In both your customer (audience) is central to the story. Theater best-practices can improve leadership and brand performance. Theater best-practices can help organizations connect with their audiences down deep were they make important decisions…emotionally.

*     *     *

• The business leader is the author or playwright
• Business processes serve as the script
• A manager is the director who reinforces only the behaviors that serve the story
• Employees are the actors who perform the story
• Their work is theater
• Their performance is the business offering
• The customer is the audience

*     *     *

Corporate Culture = Compliance

The major difference between business and theater is that in business the goal is profit (or shareholder value). In theater, profit is a by-product. The purpose and reward of theater is transformation or moments of unity in which the audience and the actors are one.

Theater Culture = Commitment

*     *     *

In the Baltimore theater scene Single Carrot is unique. Single Carrot is an ensemble theater. An ensemble is a group of complementary parts that contribute to a single effect. Sustaining the ensemble in not just their cause; it is their strength and point of differentiation.

Branding Lesson–Be different

When I asked them what their vision is they said they wanted to create a first class theater company of the future (on a shoe string!) They want to become significant by putting Baltimore on the American theater map.

Branding Lesson–Aim high and leave no wiggle room

The ensemble’s purpose is to stay together. They do so (counter-intuitively) by creating opportunities for each member to flourish on their own terms as artists and businessmen and women. Each ensemble member believes that they will realize his or her personal vision for success faster as an ensemble member loyal the the Single Carrot cause, than they would as freelance actors, designers, and directors who migrate from theater to theater in search of opportunity.

Branding lesson–Embrace paradox or…sometimes the shortest distance between where you are and where you want to be is the path of most resistance

What about leadership or the director’s role? The director must believe passionately in what the story represents. The director helps the creative team and actors to signify the meaning of the story to the audience. The director does this by establishing the world of the play. The world of the play is composed of systems. For example, a system can be the play’s genre, period in history, or language. Making sure the ensemble understands and adheres to the world of the play is the director’s responsibility.  The best way to help everyone stay true to the world of the play is to establish a metaphor for the production. The metaphor limits the way everyone thinks about the play. The director never imposes his or her “concept” on others. Theater is a culture of commitment not compliance. A good director doesn’t say much, encourages as much as possible, and says yes to every creative idea. A good director relies on the actor’s intuition and helps the actor channel their intuition through the systems that make up the world of the play.

In theater nothing is arbitrary. Every sight, sound, and movement exists in complete obedience to the world of the play. The director sets up systematic and unified limitations and then gets out of the way.

Branding Lessons–Limitation frees creativity

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Contact me when you are ready to:

• Create like a writer — America needs innovators
• Lead like a director — Your greatest assets are your story and your people
• Perform like an actor — Experience flow and sustain peak performance